Mediated communication

Historically, mediated communication was much rarer than the face-to-face method. Even though humans possessed the technology to communicate in space and time for millennia, the majority of the world's population lacked skills such as literacy to use them. This began to change in Europe with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg that led to the spread of printed texts and rising literacy from the 15th century. Separately, the first print culture was Chinese in origin. Whatever the tradition, face-to-face interaction has begun to steadily lose ground to mediated communication.

Compared to face-to-face communication, mediated communication engages fewer senses, transmits fewer symbolic cues (most mediated communication does not transmit facial expressions) and is seen as more private. Parties usually require some technical expertise to operate the mediating technologies. New computerized media, such as mobile telephones or instant messaging, allow mediated communication to transmit more oral and nonverbal symbols than the older generation of tools.

The type of mediated technology used can also influence its meaning. This is most famously rendered in Marshall McLuhan's maxim "the medium is the message".

Lundby (2009) distinguished between three forms of mediated communication: mediated interpersonal communication, interactive communication, and mass communication. Thompson (1995), however, treated mass communication not as a part of mediated communication, but on par with mediated and face-to-face communication, terming it "mediated quasi-interaction".

Differences from face-to-face communication

There are only a few ways that mediated communication and face-to-face communication function similarly. One of them is that interpersonal coordination is present in both face-to-face and mediated communication. However, mediated communication has vast differences and limitations compared with face-to-face communication. Writing in communication media and speech in face-to-face communication are different in terms of their lexical density, range of grammatical structures, varied connectivity between sentences, syntax, permanence, etc. These differences in each type of communication can change the message. Texting and e-mail, for example, contain combined forms of writing and speech, which is evident by slang and shorthand. Verbal (or textual) cues are used instead of nonverbal ones to convey the same messages.

Individuals send more information at a time through computer media than any other form of communication, including face-to-face communication. This increased rate of information transfer allows abusive forms of communication like cyberbullying and phishing to occur. The dissociation and disinhibition associated with mediated communication can cause people who are being deceived to have trouble interpreting the reactions of the deceiver since information sent through media instead of face-to-face can lose or have change the nonverbal cues within it, and, with that, signs of deception. The decreased availability of these nonverbal cues increases disassociation and anonymity. It is easier to trust someone else through mediated communication, but people with less trust can detect deception better online.

Because of the limitations of mediated communication, Nardi and Whittaker (2002) note, "Many theorists imply that face-to-face communication is the gold standard of communication." Mediated communication has been, however, described as preferable in some situations, particularly where time and geographical distance are an issue. For example, in maintaining long-distance friendship, face-to-face communication was only the fourth most common way of maintaining ties, after mediated communication tools of telephone, email and instant messaging.